06.15.17: No! No! Don’t jump!

IN LAST WEEK’S HINT, I made the point that visuals are important to a good jump page, that readers should not be confronted with a jump page that’s just a sea of gray type.

Well…my friend Jerry Bellune (pardon the pun) jumped all over that!

He wrote: “Shame!!! Encouraging this barbaric act.”

Jerry believes, as do I, that jumping stories is a practice that helps only the lazy writer and editor. He believes, as do I, that the best way to approach the presentation of a longer story is to take that story and segment it. I don’t think there’s a story out there that’s longer than 12″-15″ inches that can’t be broken into a couple of pieces. At Jerry’s paper, they’ve been doing that for years, and they have a strict no-jump policy.

When I offered last week’s hint about designing the jump first, it was my attempt to help you make your jump page more attractive for readers. If you must have a jump page, let’s do a better job of designing it.

But if I were to take control of your newspaper…well…your last issue would be the last time you jumped.